Keane (film) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Keane has received 83% fresh ratings on the film review website rottentomatoes based on 59 reviews. Todd McCarthy of Variety observed, "Watching Lewis so thoroughly inhabit the demented Keane, one can only wonder how an actor can live with such a character for weeks and weeks and maintain a semblance of sanity and contact with real life. amazingly manages to find nuances of character while running his engine above the emotional red line throughout. It's a resonant, haunting performance."

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times stated, "In a wholly unexpected and ultimately gratifying experience from writer-director Lodge Kerrigan, Keane is emotionally involving right from the beginning through its final frame . . . Aided by a most resourceful and empathetic cinematographer, John Foster, Kerrigan . . . seems to be trusting an intuition that never fails him. His focus naturally is primarily on Keane, yet he captures the relentlessly drab and impersonal urban landscapes in a way that reinforces the terrible isolation of William's anguished odyssey. As a rigorous filmmaker, Kerrigan eschews conventional exposition, which raises the possibility that William may be sufficiently deranged to have imagined his daughter's presumed abduction, perhaps even the child's existence. Tantalizing as this may sound, Kerrigan doesn't seem to be the kind of filmmaker who's playing with a tricky ambiguity, and Keane's recollections of the last moments leading up to his daughter's disappearance seem too vivid to be anything but excruciatingly real."

John McMurtrie of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "taut and suspenseful" and said, "Damian Lewis delivers a convincing, powerful and highly nuanced performance . . . He lets the audience feel compassion for Keane, and he does so without a hint of sentimentality. Easier said than done."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film three out of four stars and commented, "Kerrigan is without peer at plumbing the violence of the mind. Keane means to shake us, and does."

Meghan Keane of the New York Sun stated, "Some uncertainties - like whether his daughter was abducted, or even existed - are provoking, but most annoy. Keane's mental instability seems to wax and wane as is convenient for the narrative. He seems crazy when it makes for a compellingly awkward scene, and mentally competent when he wants something - like companionship or anonymous sex . . . By the end, the complete discomfort that Mr. Kerrigan has created seems like a forced experiment - one that may have been a rewarding challenge to create, but is difficult to watch, closer to asphyxiation than entertainment."